I like that MS tries different things over the years. Yep, their early smartphone OS sucked, so much clunkier than Palm OS and horrible battery life.

I disagree that it was clunkier than Palm. I quite liked "Pocket PC Phone Edition" back in those times, and before that Pocket PC OS. They were too forward thinking for their time, I think. I still miss the handwriting recognition it had - none of the iOS Apps even come close to understanding my handwriting, and MS Reader was better than most reading apps today.

I ended up abandoning Windows Mobile when I realized no upgrades to newer versions of the OS were supported, and because of the desolate marketplace.